139 comments:

Most blackhat hackers and "hacktivists" tend to be die hard leftists. I highly doubt they'd ever knowingly do the bidding of Trump. Although... some might, mostly due to a general love of mischief and chaos.

The Trump effect is focusing light on the hidden truths behind the DC political circus of money and power exchange making "strange bedfellows." He has a target rich environment.

No wonder Bezos' WaPo wants to destroy him so bad. The Donald has a habit of Truth Sliming everybody with something to hide, starting with the Bush Dynasty's military industrial complex operation that has had its way in secret in DC since the 1950s.

Scott M: Oy...the very last thing he needed to do was mention the birther thing.

While I agree with you both tactically and on the facts, as others have pointed out, if you want to know why some people keep insisting Obama was born in Kenya, you'll have to ask him, since he and the publisher of "Dreams From My Father" both claimed he was, right up until two months after the beginning of his first presidential candidacy.

Again, I'm perfectly willing to write that off as author-Obama wanting the leftist black street-cred having been born in Kenya to a Communist mother and Communist stepfather bought him, when in fact he was born in Hawaii. But what can't be pretended is that he never claimed otherwise.

The substitute host of The Diane Rehm Show on NPR this morning had memorized the lines the DNC gave her quite well, repeatedly referring to Trump "urging the Russians to hack Hillary's email", something both false and impossible. When a caller explicitly called her out on it, she blew him off by claiming it was shorthand for Trump urging the Russians to commit espionage against the U. S.

NPR no longer even tries to look politically impartial and ends up lying outright even more often than Hillary Clinton, if that's possible.

1. The emails Trump is talking about are the 30,000 emails that Hill's shills deleted and scrubbed. aka the "private" emails, so2. If they were hacked, it was years ago, assuming the WaPo doesnt think the FBI is hiding them at FBI HQ. They are sitting on some FSB flash drive, and the crime f committed was done without Trump. 3. so Trump is asking the Russkies to do the US a public service and demonstrate that the emails were about yoga and grandkids, or4. But the Dems are claiming this is a national security crime? Why? It was a private server, just like mine. It was yoga and grandkids, unless of course Hill is lying again and their IS National Security info on the emails, in which case.5. The Russkies have known the Secrets for years, and by revealing them we decrease the blackmail leverage they have over Hill.

win-winThe Public learns the truth, Hill gets out from under blackmail, or alternately her story about yoga emails is true. what's not the like...

You should change your handle to "Unhinged." Are you suggesting that the Russians would not have made any attempt to get to a poorly secured email trove kept by the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a private server until a US presidential candidate asked them to years after the fact?

The emails are not even hackable anymore, they are under lock and key at the FBI, if not destroyed before they can do Hillary any further damage.

Maybe Unknown can tell us why Hillary did not inform the Obama Administration about the millions she took from the Russians while the State Department was considering an application to allow the Russians to basically control North American uranium. A deal she approved. What the fuck is Trump going to do that sucks up to the Russians more?

Its going to require a lot of voter fraud for the crooked Dems to beat Trump. The liberal media is trying to help Hillary but Trump is too smart for the corrupt media and is outing them as not only corrupt but also liberal fools. The more the crooked Dems realize that Trump is too smart for them, the more likely they are to crank up their cheating operation. To get Hillary elected, the crooked Dems will have to achieve an all time high in corruption. When it comes to setting records in cheating, the Dems can be counted on to be up to the challenge.

PS: If, and I think it's likely the Russians do have the emails, then it's also likely that NSA has them as well. NSA doesn't want to reveal those sources and methods, but here's how the game is played.

1. If you are the Russians, you never start a hack of a computer from one inside FSB Hq, at Lubyanka Square. 2. You take control of a zombie computer someplace else, like in some German office building or a Shanghai warehouse. From that machine, you control one in the US, say NYC. From there you hack Hills server3. NSA is always on the lookout for these zombie machines. The trojans that turn up trying to make more zombies have to have a way of communicating, either by a hard wired master IP address or just gather info and wait for a contact from Master. So if we find a hacked zombie, we lie in wait to see where it passes its info, and4. just like double and triple agents, we put our own trojans on the Russian intermediary zombies. Then we can see what Russian priorities are, what machines they control, skim off their take and potentially plant false info5. So NSA may have copies of the Hill emails taken from the Russian zombies. Revealing that compromises sources and methods...

As I read through these emails, my only response is that I wasn't nearly cynical enough. When Comey basically demonstrated that Hillary broke the law and was "extremely careless" but not "grossly negligent" I realized that I still had a little faith in the FBI to be crushed. Now the DNC memos show me the same thing about the press.

The DNC actually preps reporters with gotchas for interviews with Trump and the press actually sends stories to the DNC before even sending them to their own editors. The DNC has replaced Journolist. It is sickening.

The DNC hack reminds me of Climategate. In that episode, the Left attacked the hack, trying to deflect from the content of the emails. That deflection failed completely as global warming is now generally seen for the farce that it is. The content of the emails is what people focused in on. So it will prove with the DNC hack. The content of those emails will continue to roil the democrat party for some time to come.

@DrillSgt.You are not cynical enough.The CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. would have been told about Hillary!'s server the minute she bought it, while the Russians would not have been looking for it until it dawned on them they could not find her on the State Dpt.'s servers.

"Throughout his career, Trump has left behind a well-documented record of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits, angry shareholders, and contractors who feel cheated, and disillusioned customers who feel ripped off. Trump says he wants to run the nation like he's run his business. God help us."

With all great con artists (Trump) the conned (Trumpsters) never know they are being conned. - Unkown

Whatever we do, we must not talk about the way that the DNC worked to keep Sanders from getting the nomination! Remember when everybody scratched their heads wondering how Hillary won six consecutive coin tosses for delegates in Iowa against Bernie? You know who wasn't wondering? People at the DNC! Now we all understand it too.

I was an international student in college so I would not have to take a foreign language (I speak 4 including (english) but did not get any scholarships as an intl student with a foreign high school degree. No games.

I suspect Obama played games - Used his Indonesian passport to get an advantage and scholarships...

I believe people have it all wrong on the subject of Hillary's missing emails.

In my Professional Opinion, most of these emails were not work-related, but rather of a deeply personal nature: thousands of deleted cries out into the wilderness from a severely depressed schizophrenic, drunken texts of despair and rage and requests for the delivery of ever more alcohol…

I could fully imagine many of these emails detailing grandiose dreams of dying by an assassin's bullet, to die a hero, a martyr, to be remembered as bigger than herself, dreams from the drunken Abyss mixed with incoherent spasms of self-debasement derived from her marriage situation…

Unfortunately, in these fantasies Bill Clinton is left as the Beloved Widower, an outcome that Hillary despises with her very soul: she CANNOT let Bill live longer than her -- this might be the only source of hateful energy she has for staying alive…

I do not believe there were many instances of sexting, due to the depressed not having any interest in sexual matters. That said, it is in my Opinion as a Therapist that she has undoubtably sent out drunken photographs of her asshole…

This is a lot to take in, I realize, but I know of which I speak: I have sent out drunken depressed photos of MY asshole, and fully understand the dynamic at work...

I am very drunk, but I will drive to the Liquor Store to get more alcohol. It's OK, I make the drive drunk all the time...

Obama went to Punahou on Oahu, a private prep school. From there he went to Occidental, ranked #43 by US News. Obama confesses that he was a so-so student. But somehow he transfers to Columbia, ranked #4 by US News, and a Harvard feeder school. WTF?

I remember watching a tv interview with a former CIA official who said, to paraphrase, "If I am the leader of these countries with cyber espionage operations, I would have fired the department head if they were not able to hack Hillary's private e-mail server".

@Drill: "So NSA may have copies of the Hill emails taken from the Russian zombies. Revealing that compromises sources and methods..." That's what I've assumed all along. Methinks Comey at least inquired. His artful plausibly-deniable statement about likely hacking of Hill's emails suggests he knows a bit more than he let on. The question is who is sitting on the info, and how much longer.

And since the gov must have some of the data, what did O know and when did he know it?

Since the DNC was hacked, we know the RNC was hacked. The fact that RNC emails haven't been leaked is because Trump is the second coming of Putin.

On the other hand, there is absolutely, positively, no reason to think that Hillary's illegal bathroom server with disabled security was ever hacked. And if by some act of god it was hacked, there was nothing on it but wedding and yoga emails, despite the fact the FBI reported she was mishandling thousands of classified emails improperly.

Blogger Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...Every time the media talks about Hillary's emails, a new set of Trump voters get their wings.

She's now down by 7.3% in the latest LA Times poll. Losing more ground the first two nights of the DNC convention.

I don't believe the polls exist to give us real, accurate, information. just as all the pro Hillary polls were moving in Trump's direction, Rasmussen , which is considered pro Trump,has moved in Hillary's direction. A few weeks ago it had Trump at +7. Now they have Hillary at +1.

And today a Pennsylvania poll comes out showing Hillary with a six or seven point lead.

TradGuy sez: "The Donald has a habit of Truth Sliming everybody with something to hide . . . ".

He also slimes the truth about innocents as well, such as the bigoted comments directed against Gonzalo Curiel the "Mexican Judge" trying the "Trump University" case.

Another example, the over-the-top attacks against the Cruz family where he recruited help from David Pecker, a Trump pal who just happens to publish the National Enquirer which attacked Heidi Cruz supposedly because Ted published a nude photo of Melania, to which Trump himself was a party (the photos were shot on his jet), Ted's supposed involvement with 5 women ( a more likely scenario if Trump had been the man) and the absurd claim that Rafael Cruz, Ted's Dad, was with Lee Harvey Oswald when JFK was shot.

The list goes on and on, so I agree that T-rump is a Truth Slimer - every day!

If this was meant as a joke, it would have been a good idea for his team to have stated that yesterday when they were spinning it. I get Althouse is already on Team Trump but this election depends a great deal on people not already committed.

I don't think it was a "joke" so much as an off-the-cuff remark, and proof why it would benefit Trump to have someone review his statements before they launch. Now, he just gave the Clintonites a chance to gloss over any coverage of DNC convention chaos (saved her bacon again!) and remind voters (a) that Trump has a long history of business in Putin's Russia, which Trump hilariously is trying to deny now; (b) Trump has made a lot of fawning statements about Putin's brand of dictatorship; (c) Trump favors policies that would give Putin more of a free hand; and (d) Trump's tax returns may be hiding some conflict of interest with Putin's cronies. Doesn't really matter if Trump wasn't seriously asking the Kremlin to spy on us and affect our election--the point is why veer off message to keep giving Hillary ammunition?

What would have been an "on message" statement? Something simple, like "DNC was hacked and it showed their primary was rigged for Hillary--and Hillary asks us to trust that her classified e-mails weren't hacked too?" Keep the heat on her, and don't give them a chance to change the subject.

If this was meant as a joke, it would have been a good idea for his team to have stated that yesterday when they were spinning it.

There is no need to "spin" it. It is an obvious joke. Do you think the Russians would need prompting to try to hack a US Secretary of State's email? Do you think they are still hackable? Do you think that if Trump really were tight with Putin, he couldn't make a private phone call?

I'd rather have someone who may say some things out of turn but says the truth most of the time than someone who is ALWAYS scripted and NEVER says the truth...

Trump in-artfully described Putin as a strong man who gets what he wants while accurately describing Obama as weak who does not know what he wants and who has accomplished NOTHING & whatever he got done was a failure, to include Obamacare, more poor blacks, fewer employed, lower standard of living, the non-withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese taking over the South China Sea, Russia taking over 1/2 of Ukraine and Georgia ISIA killing over 300 people in the last 2 months in the West, etc...

"There is no need to "spin" it. It is an obvious joke. Do you think the Russians would need prompting to try to hack a US Secretary of State's email? Do you think they are still hackable? Do you think that if Trump really were tight with Putin, he couldn't make a private phone call?"

As I stated, I didn't think it was a serious statement (I would hope he wouldn't call on his Kremlin masters via Twitter!).

"Trump in-artfully described Putin as a strong man who gets what he wants while accurately describing Obama as weak who does not know what he wants and who has accomplished NOTHING & whatever he got done was a failure, to include Obamacare, more poor blacks, fewer employed, lower standard of living, the non-withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese taking over the South China Sea, Russia taking over 1/2 of Ukraine and Georgia ISIA killing over 300 people in the last 2 months in the West, etc..."

I know what Trump meant--I assume he wasn't meaning that he wishes he could jail and torture his political opponents--and he just liked that a foreign leader could be bold and nakedly ambitious for his country. But the idea that he cozies to dictators is already a Clintonite theme, and playing into it just gives them a chance to talk more about something that distracts people from Hillary's own woes. This has been a pattern for the year.

Maybe, somehow, Scott Adams is right and this is master persuasion and just having him on everyone's mind will get him more votes in the end. I'm just not seeing the logic in it. I'll issue a mea culpa if I'm proven wrong in the end.

To Tim in Vermont - Sanders is NOT a Democrat, and when he announced he would run on the Dem ticket, he said as an "Indepen...I mean Democrat...eh, I am what I am.."

Bernie urges his followers to vote for Hillary and the next day he says, "I am returning to the Senate as an INDEPENDENT."

Therefore, I don't know why anyone is surprised the DNC favored Hillary, a lifelong Democrat who, with Bill, has raised millions for the DNC. Hillary millions and loyal support of all DNC candidates vs Bernie $0 and 0 support for DNC candidates.

Interesting to see where this goes. Some have called for him to be given fake intelligence briefings until it can be proven he won't leak them to the Russians.

"Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) wrote a letter to President Obama on Wednesday, asking him to keep Donald Trump from receiving classified intelligence briefings, citing the Republican nominee's Wednesday comments asking Russia to release Hillary Clinton's emails.

"It is my belief that these statements, when considered in the broader context of the Republican nominee’s prior conduct, warrant a re-examination of his access to this sensitive intelligence," Cicilline wrote in the letter. "These remarks reflect more than just a lack of good judgment—it is an explicit call for intervention from an adversarial foreign power to undermine the American democratic process, and represents an action just short of outright treason."

"The Republican nominee’s call for hostile foreign action represents a step beyond mere partisan politics and represents a threat to the Republic itself. It suggests that he is unfit to receive sensitive intelligence, and may willingly compromise our national security if he is permitted to do so," the congressman concluded in his letter. "With this in mind, I respectfully ask that you withhold the intelligence briefing to Mr. Trump in the interests of national security.""

Hillary said: “At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails — emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes.”

Just the sort of messages that might make Clinton seem like a normal, caring, decent,sympathetic, empathetic, all around gentle, sweet, nice lady. Dems should be encouraging their release and publication. Unless..

Of course the Russians have every byte of Hillary's Email traffic. How do we know? Because if the Russians missed even one short "CU l8r" message the head of the SVR would have been "retired" to a work camp in Siberia (that's his best case, alternatively he might have been given a 9mm headache).

Big Mike said...@Drill SGT, that's pretty damned aware of The Great Game for an EM.

The world doesn't stand still. When I last worked for NSA, it was 1971 and I was a SGT. Later, when I came back from Vietnam, I was a Drill SGT. Back to college, Regular Army commission, etc. I'm currently a senior executive for an engineering firm that supports the IC. I've held a TS/SCI clearance for 46 years. One can connect dots without walking the halls of Ft Meade.

Paul Snively said...Scott M: Oy...the very last thing he needed to do was mention the birther thing.

While I agree with you both tactically and on the facts, as others have pointed out, if you want to know why some people keep insisting Obama was born in Kenya, you'll have to ask him, since he and the publisher of "Dreams From My Father" both claimed he was, right up until two months after the beginning of his first presidential candidacy.

Let's not forget that the whole "birther" subject was started by Hillary's 2008 campaign.

As for the DNC emails, it may not have been a hack at all. It's entirely possible it was an inside job by some disaffected DNC employee. All that would require is physical access to the server and a thumb drive (as in Manning and Snowden). If it was a hack, it doesn't require the resources of a nation to hack an email server. While many nations (including Russia) have the ability and motives to do so, so do many individual hackers and organizations like Anonymous.

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.. . .With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”. . .Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Vickers ― who served in the Defense Department under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, eventually attaining the post of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence ― took to Politico Magazine after the press conference to argue that the national security policy of a future Trump White House is already substantially degraded, thanks to the GOP nominee’s constant displays of ignorance and brashness:

Even more worrisome, Trump has so alienated Republican national security professionals that he will likely have great difficulty attracting top advisers to staff his administration were he to be elected. Presidents cannot make effective national security policy by themselves. The experience and judgment of their advisers is strongly correlated to their national security success.“We need an experienced and steady hand to guide us through the current challenges to American leadership and world order,” Vickers wrote.

“Only one candidate in this presidential race can supply that,” he concluded. Hint: It’s the Democratic nominee.

This notion that Trump is in league with the Russians is certainly fascinating, if a bit absurd. If we assume it's true, that Trump is pretty much bought and paid for by Vladimir Putin, it doesn't seem like Trump is doing a particularly good job of avoiding drawing attention this relationship. I mean, announcing on Twitter that he thinks the Russians should "find" these missing emails?

If Trump was in cahoots with the Russians, wouldn't it make sense for 1) Trump to be made aware that Russia does indeed possess these 30,000 emails and 2) actually just leak the damn emails without needing Trump to make some outrageous quip on Twitter about them?

Although I will say that it's pretty amazing that so many people on the left suddenly seem to be extremely concerned about national security, especially regarding emails.

"Let's not forget that the whole "birther" subject was started by Hillary's 2008 campaign."

Sure, but that's not a reason to run with it for eight years. And Hillary at least was smart enough to let one of her surrogates run with it so she could plausibly deny having anything to do with that craziness. At a certain point, it crosses from "worthwhile inquiry" to "crackpot."

"This notion that Trump is in league with the Russians is certainly fascinating, if a bit absurd. If we assume it's true, that Trump is pretty much bought and paid for by Vladimir Putin, it doesn't seem like Trump is doing a particularly good job of avoiding drawing attention this relationship. I mean, announcing on Twitter that he thinks the Russians should "find" these missing emails?"

If he is Moscow's "secret candidate" they're doing a piss poor job of keeping it secret by communicating via Twitter!

More likely Trump is just a bit enamored with Putin (as he is with anyone he deems "strong", regardless of their cruelty or viciousness) and like the last two presidents is under the misimpression that he can "handle" Putin.

Treason! Ha ha ha! But not putting highly classifed information on an private server which was exposed to hackers, no sirree! That isn't treason! Nope, because it was guarded by the Secret Service so nobody could put a floppy in the A: drive and copy her emails and walk out with them!

Nope! Selling favors to the Russians, as reported in the New York Times? Not treason either!

Unknown, you better go back to your boss and tell them your talking points are just too ridiculous, and to send you some new ones. Or maybe you can change your name from "Unknown" to the equally descriptive "Bag over my head"

"We the undersigned, members of the Republican national security community, represent a broad spectrum of opinion on America’s role in the world and what is necessary to keep us safe and prosperous. We have disagreed with one another on many issues, including the Iraq war and intervention in Syria. But we are united in our opposition to a Donald Trump presidency. Recognizing as we do, the conditions in American politics that have contributed to his popularity, we nonetheless are obligated to state our core objections clearly:

His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle. He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence.

His advocacy for aggressively waging trade wars is a recipe for economic disaster in a globally connected world.

His embrace of the expansive use of torture is inexcusable.

His hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric undercuts the seriousness of combating Islamic radicalism by alienating partners in the Islamic world making significant contributions to the effort. Furthermore, it endangers the safety and Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of American Muslims.

Controlling our border and preventing illegal immigration is a serious issue, but his insistence that Mexico will fund a wall on the southern border inflames unhelpful passions, and rests on an utter misreading of, and contempt for, our southern neighbor.

Similarly, his insistence that close allies such as Japan must pay vast sums for protection is the sentiment of a racketeer, not the leader of the alliances that have served us so well since World War II.

His admiration for foreign dictators such as Vladimir Putin is unacceptable for the leader of the world’s greatest democracy.

He is fundamentally dishonest. Evidence of this includes his attempts to deny positions he has unquestionably taken in the past, including on the 2003 Iraq war and the 2011 Libyan conflict. We accept that views evolve over time, but this is simply misrepresentation.

His equation of business acumen with foreign policy experience is false. Not all lethal conflicts can be resolved as a real estate deal might, and there is no recourse to bankruptcy court in international affairs.

Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world. Furthermore, his expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against his detractors poses a distinct threat to civil liberty in the United States. Therefore, as committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head. We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office."

Opinions is opinions. Facts is facts.Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system

Any person who claims to care about the security of the United States cannot passibly vote for Hillary, based her mishandling of classified information. Hillary can't claim that she was joking. She certainly cannot claim ignorance. Incompetence is her only defense. Partisanship is the only defense of Hillary's backers.

Brando said...More likely Trump is just a bit enamored with Putin (as he is with anyone he deems "strong", regardless of their cruelty or viciousness) and like the last two presidents is under the misimpression that he can "handle" Putin.

Yeah, Trump (laughably) think's he's seeing some sort of kindred spirit in Putin. Like "Wow, he's a tough, manly guy who has the love of his people!". Meanwhile, Putin is ex-KGB and FSB. A guy who has almost certainly personally committed homicides and torture. A guy who has ordered the deaths of many political disruptors. A guy who most likely bombed several apartment buildings killing hundereds in September '99. A guy who ordered the slow, horrific death of Alexander Litvinenko from polonium poisoning. Not to mention the whole Crimea thing.

There's a lot of silly and imperfect qualities about Trump, but his sins are nothing compared to Putins.

Rusty, unfortunately you have no credibility in national security. These guys are professionals, while you are probably of less than average intelligence. Maybe you're a mechanic working from out of your garage, nothing wrong with that, but your national security 'chops' don't compare to these guys.

I would like to see Obama's HLS grades. He graduated magna cum laude from HLS after being a "B" student (or at least not receiving any honors) as an undergrad. That is pretty unusual, and I've wondered if there might have been a cohort of "forward-looking" professors at HLS that knew BO was going to be a rocket and arranged to give him straight A/A+s in every civil rights/CLS course he took after his 1L year to help get him launched. I think BO was born in HI but may have fibbed about it as an undergrad to take advantage of some programs.

Blogger Unknown said...Rusty, unfortunately you have no credibility in national security. These guys are professionals, while you are probably of less than average intelligence. Maybe you're a mechanic working from out of your garage, nothing wrong with that, but your national security 'chops' don't compare to these guys.

Are you channeling the National Security experts Eric? Do you too pretend to have more national security expertise than they do? I'm not asking anyone to listen to ME. If you had half a brain you'd be listening to THEM. I am merely the messenger....you dumbass.

Received knowledge describes the epistemological position in which women in the study perceived knowledge as a set of absolute truths received from infallible authorities. The process of learning, as understood by received knowers, involves receiving and repeating the knowledge and words of authorities. In this sense words are no longer viewed as weapons, and are seen as critical to the learning process, but the origin and meaning of words and knowledge remain external (Love and Guthrie 1999).

Women characterizing this position lacked confidence in their own ability to speak and generally defined themselves externally, usually in relation to social norms, gender roles and expectations of others, i.e., cultural ideals of women as set forth by external authorities. Received knowers tended to find disagreement, paradox or ambiguity intolerable (Love and Guthrie 1999) since these violated the black-and-white absolutist nature of knowledge. - Wikipedia

50% of women supposedly think like Unknown, which is why they are such easy prey for the Democrats.

"Unknown" wrote:Are you channeling the National Security experts Eric? Do you too pretend to have more national security expertise than they do?

FBI director Comey responds:"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."These unnamed colleagues are doubtless hoping for high positions in a hypothetical Hillary Clinton administration. Any person who claims that they are voting for Hillary because she can handle the job of president better than her opponent is relying on hope over evidence.

The context of Trump's remarks was the supine acceptance by the press of Hillary's unwillingness to give a press conference after FBI director found Hillary and her colleagues "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."

@unknown 2:26. I am glad to hear that many of the military incompetents that have been promoted to important posts during the Obama administration are planning to leave. It seems that under Obama political correctness and adherence to climate change mythology have been more important to assignment than war fighting ability. Apparently these officers know they won't last in a Trump administration so they are polishing their resumes for civilian jobs. There are plenty of qualified junior officers who can replace these ass kissers.

Now if the folks at the EPA, IRS, Education and several others would leave as well our country would be in a whole lot better shape.

If Donald Trump becomes president, much of the Pentagon’s recent progress in wooing Silicon Valley to defense work might come to a halt.

That’s one takeaway from the open letter published Thursday by 145 current and former executives from Facebook, Google, Slack, Twitter, Cloudera, and many more stalwarts of Silicon Valley.

“Trump would be a disaster for innovation,” the letter says. “His vision stands against the open exchange of ideas, free movement of people, and productive engagement with the outside world that is critical to our economy — and that provide the foundation for innovation and growth.”"

"His vision stands against the open exchange of ideas, free movement of people, and productive engagement with the outside world that is critical to our economy — and that provide the foundation for innovation and growth.”

Read this simply as "American programmers are just too expensive!" How can we let Trump put a limit on how many billions we can accumulate by limiting our access to cheap imported labor!"

I corrected a typo in "Unknown"'s comment:"That’s one takeaway from the open letter published Thursday by 145 current and former executives from Facebook, Google, Slack, Twitter, Cloudera, and many more Democrats of Silicon Valley"

"@Brando 1244 Look at the video! Does that look like a serious, off with their heads statement to you? He was making a joke. I believe Hagar posted this link yesterday. You should read the article."

Oh, I know it wasn't a serious statement--most of his tweets are off the cuff. While they provide a lot of entertainment value, it's also why his messaging keeps tripping up. Like I said earlier though, if I turn out to be wrong and all of this results in a big win for him, I'll own up to that. Just right now it looks like flailing.

"Trump didn't go to HLS, Brando. He has an undergrad degree in economics."

I know--I meant their respective transcripts. Not that I could really care what their grades were--we've had smart presidents who went to virtually unknown colleges so I don't think grades or degrees are the real measure of a president.

"Hello, Mrs. Clinton?""Yes""My name is Rajeev. I have found that there is a virus on your computer!""Oh no!""But do not worry, Mrs. Clinton. I can fix it for you. I need you to enable "Remote Desktop Protocol" on your PC, and in the "domain allowed" field, type in vputin.gov.ru.""And that will fix it?""Most assuredly, Mrs. Clinton." "Okay, here goes . . ."

Only Hillary Clinton knows what is in the destroyed emails. But we can be sure what is in the destroyed emails is much more damaging than the unending turmoil caused by destroying them. I think she is laying the groundwork for some sort of plausible deniability.

Clinton and her allies are sure someone has all of the emails. So, this whole Russians lie is a setup. When the most incriminating emails are released she swear the emails have been forged or at least modified and are inauthentic. The claim will be the Russians faked or modified the content of the emails.....in support of Trump.

The Left will claim Trump is an active participant in the hacking, the manipulation and the release.

Brando, back in 2008, Obama's backers tried to minimize the fact that Obama had very little experience in national office by saying that he was some kind of hyper genius. Bill Clinton is a smart guy. He came from a poor background, and wound up a Rhodes Scholar. There is very little evidence that Obama has more than average intelligence. He was a scholar who never published, unlike most HLR editors he didn't go on to clerk for the supreme court or go to work in Big Law. He worked for a small law firm in Chicago that was politically connected to the now disgraced Blagojovich administration. I've heard that he passed the Illinois bar on the first try, but I don't know enough about that test to say if that is proof of high intelligence.

I quit coming to this site because Ms. Althouse's blog does not attract anyone from the Left who is intellectually honest, factual, and able to express ideas in a coherent manner. I absented myself for about a year and just started checking back in. I was hopeful after deducting that garage and Inga and cookie no longer comment here for whatever reason. Things had to improve, right?Instead we have pmxxx who will cling to mischaracterizations (Trump asking the Russians to hack) to fuel her feigned outrage despite knowing the full quote doesn't support her, that avoids answering questions such as: if the emails were just about yoga, etc.; what's to worry? And we now have a shitstorm of 'Unknowns' who come off as Lovitz's lawyer Tommy Flanagan and Baghdad Bob's love child. Posting opinion as facts, claiming that the Russians and Trump are colluding and then goes on belittling commenters who clearly have an understanding of cybersecurity, asking them how can they know what the Russians are doing. All of it plain smears and attempts at misdirection.

This is not a good look for a blog.

I've asked for a better class of lefty here. I've not heard anything better than that from any Hillary supporter. so I guess this is the best they've got.

"In the halls of the Pentagon, there is a different plan afoot for the Trump presidency. Here, officers are privately contemplating what they would do should Trump become their commander-in-chief. And more often than not, they proclaim they will leave."

Are people supposed to change their minds over this? The military are government employees - they work for the taxpayers. If a majority of the taxpayers elect Trump, and these "officers" decide to walk off their jobs, then let them. If they don't have enough respect for the people who pay their salaries to honor their wishes, then maybe it's time for new officers as well.

"In the halls of the Pentagon, there is a different plan afoot for the Trump presidency. Here, officers are privately contemplating what they would do should Trump become their commander-in-chief. And more often than not, they proclaim they will leave."

Considering that Obama has spent the last 7 years conducting an ideological purge of the upper ranks of the military ("it's not McCarthyism when we do it!"), I hope very much that the above is true so that some of his purge will be undone.

@Original Mike - to some extent, I disagree about bar exams. At least for the Multistate exam, there is a pretty high correlation between LSAT and MBE scores, and likely decent between SAT and LSAT scores. My theory there is that part of it is that most recent grads go straight from LS to bar prep to taking the bar. I would hazard to guess that a lot of the fresh outs who fail the first time go straight to work in jobs that don't allow them the time to study. Or, just don't take the time (I am thinking JFK, Jr here who was in his bachelor of the year phase in NYC when he failed it twice). Though I do know one guy who failed it at least three times - because he wouldn't buckle down and study. Like John, John, getting too much sex. I should add that Crooked Hillary apparently failing the DC bar was esp pathetic, esp for a YLS grad. When I first sat for a bar, DC had the lowest MBE only requirements in the country, maybe 30 pts below CO (my MBE score that time was maybe 50 points or so above the DC requirements). I never failed a bar exam (including the patent bar, with a 35% pass rate), but will admit that my second state bar, a decade after the first, was a lot more brutal, partly because I was working full time, and partially because you get out of practice studying that way.

Unknown said..."In the halls of the Pentagon, there is a different plan afoot for the Trump presidency. Here, officers are privately contemplating what they would do should Trump become their commander-in-chief. And more often than not, they proclaim they will leave."7/28/16, 2:26 PM

Excellent news, like self-deportation. If you were to kill everyone above the rank of major, and kill half the majors, you'd probably be better off, but this is neater. Certainly Obama appointees are worthless prima facie or is it ipso facto. For experience and judgment, call back everybody that Obama forced to retire.

I think Qwinn is correct - the officers who would leave because of Trump winning are probably almost exclusively the ones who have thrived in the politically correct environment of the Obama Pentagon. Esp peace time general and field grade officers who have to be purged before we can go to war. Something that seems to have happened with our military routinely at least since the Civil War. They are good at politicking, but not at fighting.

Hillary rolls up another critical endorsement:The leader of America's most prominent communist party credits Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with helping usher socialism into the political mainstream, but says it's essential to back Hillary Clinton if she defeats Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary.

John Bachtell, national chairman of the Communist Party USA, says he cast a ballot for Sanders in the Illinois primary in March, but that the self-styled democratic socialist's loyal backers should temper their criticism of Clinton as a warmongering Wall Street puppet.

"The most important thing is keeping our eye on this extreme right-wing danger and really hoping that all political organizations and democratic forces will unite together to try to defeat that," he says.http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-31/communist-party-leader-voted-for-sanders-will-back-clinton